Talin Suciyan’s book The Armenians in Modern Turkey: Post-Genocide Society, Politics, and History is an important contribution to the literature of genocide studies as well as sociology, history, political studies, and conflict resolution to name a few. In her book, the author not only presents the life of the Armenian community in Turkey after the Armenian Genocide of 1915–1923, but also shows how the continual denial of the genocide by the modern Turkish government and the state is a way of continuing the genocidal policies of the Ottoman Empire.

The academic significance of Suciyan’s work is her ability to discuss all these issues through the lens of the Armenian community that remained in Turkey, and largely in Istanbul, after the genocide. As an ethnic Armenian who speaks Armenian, the author was able to conduct important historiographic research of original Armenian sources both in Armenia as well as in Turkey. The book is built on vast evidence and information available through Armenian newspapers published mostly in Turkey (also in Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere), yearbooks and reports produced by community organizations, and memoirs of prominent journalists and community members. In addition to this written historiography, the author brings in another important dimension: the oral histories of genocide survivors and their families that often are left out of such studies.

The first chapter of the book, “Social Conditions of Armenians Remaining in Istanbul and in the Provinces,” provides extensive information on the number of Armenians remaining in different regions of Turkey and speaks about the environment that they faced after returning to their homes after 1915. The author talks about destruction and appropriation of cultural and historical sights, in particular, the churches and schools, as a structure of post-genocidal society where minority rights, including the cultural and educational rights, remained suppressed. The book provides an important gender lens pointing to structural violence that targeted both Armenian women and men in their respective contexts. While Armenian women were very vulnerable to becoming concubines and had routinely been kidnapped, the Turkish state had institutionalized policies that also targeted Armenian men. Suciyan draws attention to the continuity of the policies of the Ottoman Empire in Kemalist Turkey that further institutionalized the denial of events of 1915/1916–1923 through introduction and implementation of a number of laws [in particular, the Settlement Law, Law of Pious Foundations, Yirim Kura Askerlik (Random Draft of Non-Muslims)].

The second chapter of the book, “The Legal Context,” focuses on the abolition of the legal basis of the local administration for the Armenian community. Suciyan points out that the Republic used the pretext of the secular state to undermine the legal base of the Armenian Patriarchate in providing community administration. More specifically, the author underlines that “the main aim of these state policies was to find a way to undermine the Constitution/Nizamname by bereaving the community of its legal bases and more importantly by reducing the Patriarch to a mere religious function stripped of any relation to the social, economic and political life of the community” (94).

The third chapter, “State Surveillance and Anti-Armenian Campaigns,” provides documented evidence of state policies that were aimed not only to deny the events of 1915 but also to marginalize the Armenian narrative and the community in general. Censorship of Armenian newspapers, close monitoring of their content, prosecution, and harassment of Armenian intelligentsia are all tools the author views as silencing the Armenian narrative, pushing the Armenian community into the shadow, and institutionalizing the denial of genocide. This process is placed in the context of the World War II, the dynamics of which (territorial claims by the Soviet Union, calls for repatriation, etc.) further exacerbated anti-Armenian sentiment in Turkey. The Turkish press, this time as well, presented the Armenian community as being an instrument in the hands of foreign states (more specifically, the Soviet Union) and thus in opposition with the interests of the Turkish state.

The last chapter of the book, “The Patriarchal Election Crisis: 1944–50,” devoted to the discussion of the Patriarchal elections in the immediate postwar period, helps the reader to understand how the Patriarchate has lost its influence as a social and political institution and was reduced to only a religious structure with little or no influence over political and social matters and administration of the Armenian community.

Suciyan’s scholarship is important for a number of reasons. First of all, the book not only brings to life and tells the story of the Armenian community who remained in Turkey after the Genocide of 1915, but is also an important perspective on the history of modern Turkish state during the early years of its establishment through the eyes of its minority population—Armenian citizens. Secondly, Suciyan introduces a very different understanding of the concept of “diaspora,” which emphasizes the perpetual nature of genocide through its continual denial by the perpetrator. While most of the literature on the Armenian Diaspora defines “diaspora” as the community that exists outside of Armenia in France, Belgium, Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere, Armenians that remained in Turkey do not fall under the “classic” definition of a “diaspora.” However, Suciyan argues that as a result of “structural and social eradication of Armenians remaining in Turkey” (27), Armenians created a diaspora community in Turkey by moving to Istanbul, which provided relatively safe refuge for them. And finally, Suciyan shows how the structural and institutional denial of genocide by the Republic of Turkey makes the genocide survivors complicit in silencing their own narratives.

In my opinion, one aspect that the author did not fully expose is the role that different Armenian political groups and fractions played during this period. While the narrative and evidence presented by the author hint to longstanding tensions between different political groups, she never discusses these tensions and their effects on the weakening of Armenian community institutions. In addition, the reader would have benefited from more detailed discussion of Western Armenian Diaspora and Turkish Armenia Diaspora relational discussion, as many policies in the Republic were developed also in response to the political actions of Armenian Diaspora around the world.